The Convoluted Musings of Toph Bei Fong
by Kelar The Mage
Summary: TBF muses on life, cactus juice, her crazy friends, romance, and stupid people. Canon with plenty of crack. Current: TBF is baffled by Fire Nation girls. Thank goodness Zuko is awkward.
1. Bars Are Cute

This ramble brought to you courtesy of the end of finals. I meant to write an angsty-ish Tokka fic, but it ended up being about a bar, drinking, and some weird shit going down.

For some reason, I'm now in love with the idea of Ty Lee and Toph being friends. You know, the slightly psychotic and irresponsible kind of friends? Yeah.

I probably will be inspired to just crank out random Toph-thoughts involving further insanity, ramblings, and underaged drinking. (No, I don't condone it, but Sokka has to have something he can yell at Toph for...temporarily at least, that is.) In the meantime, consider this a messy, convoluted idea brought to you by the end of finals and the happiness imbued in the license to be a bitch all new upperclassmen get. Rated T for minor language and mostly, underaged drinking.

Disclaimers: AVATAR DOES NOT BELONG TO ME. Don't drink underaged, especially not at twelve or thirteen. Toph should not be your role model. Neither should Ty Lee.

* * *

So everyone likes cute rainbows and hearts and bunnies and stuff, right? Too bad. See, we get enough of that with Katara and Aang, now that they've finally admitted they luuuurve each other. Yes, that was my cue for someone to throw up, no it wasn't me. I've got a strong stomach, after all. And so, back to Katara and Aang, they're glued at the hips. And the mouth.

And other places that I, unfortunately know about. I've told them to keep away from the ground a hundred freaking times, but they can't just control themselves, apparently, even with me threatening to loose Big Brother on them. Not that Snoozles is all that scary, but still. I guess he isn't any better with Suki though, but fortunately, they keep away from the rocks. I might actually have to hurt someone in that case.

Yeah, everyone loves rainbows and bunnies my ass. Apparently, one of the Spirits has a thing for torturing teenage girls with romance - and sex - all around her. I did, after all, honestly walk in on Mai and Zuko giving a whole new meaning to the Fire Nation's throne room as the 'birth of power'. Ugh. Yeah, that particular Spirit has it in bad for me. First my parents, now an overload of finally released hormones.

Of course, that leaves me with the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors while the two couples in our travelling camp go at it every horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and circular surface they can find. Or underwater. The only reason I know about that one is because Ty Lee saw and told me. For an overly cheerful acrobat who used to try to kill me, she's pretty fun, and she has one thing up on causing mischief with Snoozles. _She_ doesn't care that the legal drinking age in the Earth Nation is sixteen. And neither do the bartenders, once they see the size of her boobs. Those things are so big I can feel them when she's walking. Frankly, it's a little creepy, but hey. It gets me my beloved cactus juice. Sokka wasn't the only one to get high off that stuff in the desert, it seems, because there's a whole brand of alcohol made with those cactus'. It's freaking delicious, and the hallucinations aren't too bad either. I mean, I saw all sorts of pretty colors the first time, and now I've progressed to narrating my life story in bawdy bar songs while I'm seeing evil ostrich horses massacring giant airships. They're some really realistic hallucinations, yanno.

The only drawback of the whole alcohol thing is that once in a while, it gets me (and maybe Ty Lee) into trouble. Like now, we're listening to Sokka, Sugar Queen, and Twinkletoes berating me for nearly destroying a bar. Ty Lee is still completely drunk, but I sober off quickly. Apparently Fire Nation girls are lightweights.

"How could you be so completely irresponsible, Toph?" he yells, and I can feel him flinging his hands up for dramatic emphasis.

"I help too!" Ty Lee crows, flopping backwards onto Suki's shoulder. Yep, she's still wasted.

Suki actually went with us, did I mention? She helped us destroy the bar. Well not completely...I just Earthbent it into a crater. The owner actually likes it - I think. He was mentioning needing a new name when Sokka, Aang and Sugar Queen came to drag us away.

"How could you go along with it, Suki?" Katara demanded, right behind her brother. For once.

Suki is probably giving Katara a skeptical look, and I mean, after Zuko's birthday party, who wouldn't? I think the whole Earth Nation knows about _that_ little display. "We needed booze," she says slowly, like she's talking to a small child. "Booze i' good."

"Okay, moving past _that_," Twinkie sighs. Twinkie...that's a good way to make him sound sillier, must remember that for later. "How did you manage to put the bar in a crater and set half of it on fire?"

Suki and I can piece it together, I mean, we're clearly the most rational.

"Some guy tried to drag Ty Lee off to a back room," Suki says slowly.

"And she knocked him to the ground with all the pin-sticky stuff, and maybe he went sterile 'cuz she's drunk," I say, grinning.

"And then his friends decided to attack her, so we stepped in," Suki continued.

"And I was trying to Earthbend one of them down into the ground and got the bar instead."

"And that's how the candles fell over and set the bar on fire," Suki finished for me.

Ty Lee giggles. "An' I got moar juice," she adds, hiccupping.

I can feel a threeway meeting of Mr. Face-meet-Mr. Palm coming, and it's just too much. In short order, Suki and I are in hysterics with Ty Lee.

You know, even if she is with my erm...'crush'...Suki really isn't too bad. Especially when she pulls the pinecone out of her ass and does something crazy.

In conclusion, now that I'm feeling like falling asleep in a crazy pile of rocks, bars are very cute when they're in big ditches and when you're daydreaming about Sokka and evil muffins.


	2. Dressup

This one kinda has a bit of an...unfinished feel to it, while at the same time, feeling completely finished. ; I don't get it either.

This one is a lot less rambly, and is inspired by a bunch of the pictures I've seen of Sokka in a dress looking terrified. It also has some more Suki-Ty Lee-Toph friendship, fewer hints of Toph's crush on Snoozles, and a reprise of Toph's Melonlordness.

I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER OR ANY CHARACTERS OR IDEAS EXPRESSED WITHIN.

* * *

"Suki," I whispered. I'd come out of my rock tent because of my undoubtedly brilliant and wonderful idea, and snuck into her tent (she only used it when Snoozles was drunk).

"What is it Toph?" she murmured sleepily, sitting up. I could still feel the earth through the floor of the tent, though it was a duller presence.

"I thought of how to ensure Sokka being more careful about drinking," I told her.

She was awake all at once. "Dare I ask?" she said, sliding out of her bedding.

"Oh yes, because we're going to need a fancy dress and make-up."

I grinned when her silence told me she was waiting. "Snoozles is totally out of it when he drinks. We put the make-up and dress on him, and hide the rest of his stuff in Twinkletoes' bags." I was pleased with the plan.

"I'll get one of mine," Suki said, after a short pause. I felt and heard her rummaging through her bag, and then she snickered. "I hope Sokka hates pink."

"He's about to," I promised, and followed her to his tent. He was completely unconscious. I sorted out his clothing from his other belongings, then carried them to Appa while Suki worked. It didn't take long before I had all of Sokka's masculine clothing tucked away with the maps for the Water Tribes and of the Fire Nation. Since we were dealing with the Earth Kingdom, we didn't really need maps anymore. We'd all traversed the countryside enough to know it by heart, and as we took out any pockets of Fire Nation that hadn't gotten the message that they were toast (and muffins, chickenboar, and Sabretoothed-Mooselion chow), we got to know it _even_ better.

I sensed Ty Lee walking from her side of the camp to me. "Toph, what are you doing?" she asked softly.

"Making sure Snoozles wants to quit drinking," I told her, bluntly.

Suki came out from Sokka's tent, hunched over with giggles. She spotted Ty Lee. "Hey, do you want to do something to his hair?" she asked.

Ty Lee probably started smirking then. "I'd love to," she said, and flounced into the tent. She came out soon enough, cartwheeling. "He's gonna be a masterpiece in the morning," she hummed. "Unless he changes."

"He can't," I told her. "I've hidden all his clothes." The three of us retreated to our individual tents before we could wake everyone up by laughing.

Sleeping in a rock tent will understandably give you weird dreams. Even I can admit that. I'm still not sure they beat the dreams you get on cactus juice, but they're pretty strange anyhow. That night, I dreamed that Fire Lord Ozai was ordering me to marry Iroh. It was particularly vivid when I decided to take on Ozai in one of those Agni Kai thingummies. I beat the living pigbear fat out of him, and ended the dream by conquering the Fire Nation as the Melonlord. It was a good dream.

The morning peace, and my conquest of Ember Island (which involved burning the house of the players there) was shattered by an earsplitting scream. For once, unannoyed, I made my way outside, along with the rest of our group. "SNOOZLES TURN IT DOWN!" I shouted.

"Look at me Toph! I'm a girl, I'm hideous and I'm in a dress, look at me!" he sobbed, latching onto me tearfully. Of the opportunity he was giving me...innocent, naive Sokka was no match for the brutal power of Melonlord Toph.

"First of all, I'm blind, idiot. Second of all, you're still male, despite the falsetto," I said, and smirked as he made a questioning noise. "Some things you just don't want to know, Snoozles. But I will say this, Aang's got you beat." That was a total lie, but humiliating both of them in one stroke just made it better.

All the girls in camp were giggling, and Sokka and Aang seemed to be having very different reactions. Aang was out of my ability to see. Apparently he'd lifted off the ground in excitement or something. Sokka was sobbing harder than before, and had released me. Suki and Ty Lee were clutching each other's shoulders.

With Sokka collapsed on the ground, I could now feel the extent of what the other two had done. His hair had been pulled into a miniature version of Katara's hairdo. He was in one of the uncomfortable court gowns Suki had been coerced into donning for the coronation ball for Zuko, and I hadn't realized it was possible to make that much make-up stick to a person's face before.

"Do I dare ask who did what to him?" Aang asked, alighting next to Sokka finally.

"I dunno," I said, shrugging. "Maybe someone got bored."

"You didn't feel anything, Toph?" he asked.

"Besides Sokka staggering into camp at two?" I frowned. "No, not really. After I told him to shut up I went back to sleep."

"And he lectures us about drinking," Ty Lee muttered to Suki. "Wanna bet how bad his hangover is?"

"Worse than any of mine," Suki muttered.

Sokka continued sobbing at my feet, and as I was tapping my foot, and idea came to me. "Ty Lee," I said, pitching my voice slightly. "Come with me down to the river." She followed me complacently.

"What's up?" Ty Lee asked immediately.

"Can you cut my hair?" I asked. "Short."

"It'll look cute that way," she responded, by way of agreement. With a small knife borrowed from Mai, she cut my hair away. I felt each lock drop to the ground, and my smile began to grow.

"Any reason you decided to do this, this morning?" she asked.

"It's my fourteenth birthday. I figured it was time to change something."


	3. Wait what?

I'm sorry, all Sukka shippers. I like Tokka too much. And then something weird occurred to me and...this happened. I don't understand my brain. Have a cookie, y'all?

Been a while since I updated, yeah...

I don't own Avatar, but I seem to be the first person to consider the particular ship endorsed by this...

* * *

"Wait what?" someone screeches.

Oh right, that's my voice. Hormones are making it so much girlier. Just like they're making me look weird (or so Aang informed me this morning).

"I'm going to break up with Sokka," Suki sighs. I think she's had this reaction a few dozen times by now, since I've heard the same refrain of my last statement from the lips of every Kiyoshi Warrior, Ty Lee, Twinkletoes, and Katara by now. Her boyfriend - soon to be ex-boyfriend - has yet to hear, though. Probably because he's still in a sleep that rivals a coma from a drinking contest with Haru. They're still sprawled there by the fireplace of the Kiyoshi suite in Zuko's palace (the 'Gaang' has a suite too, for the four of us, but we seem to always wind up with the Kiyoshi girls when we're here at the same time), too, snoring, and I can sense that he's several hours from waking up. Haru's probably not too far from it.

"But- why?" I ask. So I like him. Big whoop. I like Suki too (though not in the same way...that's Ty Lee who likes her that way). And if the boys have "bros before hos", well...I do remember a completely uninebriated Suki and Katara in an argument against Sokka and Aang saying "chicks before dicks". I think Snoozles and Twinkletoes about choked. Point is, Suki's my friend. "If it's the drinking...well, he ain't as bad as me."

She laughs. "No, Toph, it's not the drinking. Though he is an annoying drunk." I'd predicted that much in the first ten minutes of knowing him, after all. It had been completely confirmed when he finally got truly drunk last night, four years after my original thought about it.

"Soooo?" I ask, drawing it out of her.

She sighs again. "We're adults, Toph. I'm supposed to lead Kiyoshi Island someday, and he's supposed to be chief of the Southern Water Tribe one day. Besides the fact that it won't work, at all, Sokka and I only see each other once or twice a year."

"He's got it bad for you still," I point out.

"I know," she says. "He handles distance well."

"You don't."

"I'm horrible with it," she tells me, and I feel her rubbing her face. So she doesn't have the make up on today, at least. Mai says it looks stupid, and I kind of think I'd agree if I could see it, since Mai and I generally seem to have similar taste and opinions (in tea, in whether the palace is too gaudy - it's so over-the-top I can feel it, whether Suki is ever going to convince Ty Lee to not dye her uniform pink).

"Who've you fallen for now, then?" This is why Katara says I make an awful diplomat, and why Zuko has banned me from speaking in meetings. (I whisper my comments to Sokka instead, and if he can twist it into something tactful, he says it for me. It makes me dependent on him, sadly, but it's averted a few crises, so I won't complain. Much.)

She doesn't even dance around it. "The Boulder." Then she really buries her face in her hands, which seems to be to hide a blush. It's amazing how much I can pick up on, just through the stone beneath my feet.

I'm stumped by her answer though. "Er...why?"

I'm treated to an hour long symphony on why he's wonderful. This is more than I've heard from her about Sokka, ever. If I recall rightly, she found all his gestures sweet, but embarrassing, and when I'd eavesdrop on the girl talk she and Ty Lee do, she would hardly talk about him. I mean, I'd only gotten a year where I could readily eavesdrop on it (living on Kiyoshi Island is interesting, by the way, and everyone should try it when they run away from home for the second time), so maybe she talked more about him when it was new... But Suki doesn't restrain her emotions very much around her female friends. She keeps everything wrapped up quietly inside around the guys.

"Anyhow, when I realized I'd nearly kissed him," she says, "I knew I needed to break up with Sokka. Hence why I made it a point to get here around you guys' annual visit. And then he had to be sweet and charming and I couldn't do it yesterday."

"So telling everyone else is your way of preparing yourself?"

"Yeah." She gives a more nervous laugh. "I also wanted to ask you to take care of him."

"Why me?" I blurt out.

"Because you're the only person who actually manages to beat sense into him, no matter what," she says. "And Katara said he gets stupid after a break-up. Or whatever he had with the Water Tribe princess."

It makes sense, put like that. "Fine." This is going to make being friends with all the Kiyoshi awkward, isn't it?

On the upside...next Earth Rumble, Sokka _definitely_ won't be rooting for The Boulder.


	4. Spirits I Sound Like a Guy

I will admit, this was inspired by how many rage-alicious Zutara shippers I've seen (primarily on facebook pages...). And it was inspired by the rash of celeb weddings... Also, funny story, when I wrote this, my spell check tried to turn 'old maid' into 'old man'. Yeah. That's OBVIOUSLY what I was trying to say. As always, I don't own A:TLA.

* * *

Spirits, I Sound Like a Guy

The Fire Nation baffles me. Well, Fire Nation _girls_ baffle me, to be more precise. Mai's just turned eighteen, so someone, anyone, please explain to this sane Earth Kingdom girl how that makes her an old maid. And let me in on the secret of why they want Sugar Queen and sparky together, too, while you're at it. I don't get how those two would make a 'striking' couple. I'm pretty sure Mai's killed more people than either of them. They aren't exactly assassins. (Mai isn't officially one...but I've found more than one tiny group of rebels dead with her knives. And, being the great friend I am, I haven't told Sparky or Twinkletoes on her. Since the both of them seem to think killing is never a solution. Just because it ain't pretty doesn't make it unnecessary. But that's why Sokka, Mai, and me are the practical ones. I suppose there have to be people around to take care of the idealists.) But seriously, how is being eighteen an old maid?

I suppose I could ask, but that would mean I would have to admit to eavesdropping. Which would be awkward. Still, Mai's the furthest thing from an old maid I can think of, except for, say, Twinkletoes. He's certainly no old maid. And I'm not going to admit except maybe to the Spirits how funny it would be if I started calling him Old Maid instead of Twinkletoes. I can just hear him screeching. It'd be almost as perfect a moment as Sokka screaming "Down with the Boulder!" at Earth Rumble whatever-number-it-was a few months ago. Or as perfect as the Boulder's reaction to finding a note (written with Katara's help, of course) of congratulations to him and Suki from The Blind Bandit. Or as great as scaring the crap outta Twinkletoes, Zuko, and Snoozles at Ember Island last month. Melon Lord will never get old.

The girls are talking again. "Hey, look, it's the Firelord!" one squeals. The other giggles, as the first continues, "And he's with Lady Katara! Oooo!"

"The _jewelry_ shop!" squeaks the first.

"I hadn't heard he'd broken up with the old maid!" the other says.

They lapse into a (no-doubt) wide-eyed silence, not hearing me slide down the wall of the building I'd been perched on. They do shriek like nothing else when they see my shadow in front of them, which makes me grin, as I wander into the shop I can feel the two of them in. "'sup Sparky, Sugar Queen."

"Toph!" Katara's heart beat races for a second before calming. "Oh, oh- this is perfect! She can help you with the quality of the ring."

"...ring?" The girls had been insinuating that, or something, but I'm still lost.

Katara lowers her voice. "Zuko's finally decided to propose to Mai. _About time_ if you ask me. So I'm helping him pick it out. Something Fire Lady-ish, but that won't interfere with her fighting. Maybe even something that can work as a weapon..."

I grin. "Well, I suppose I can help with the worthy cause of getting you two hitched," I tell them, even as I sense the two girls coming to stare inside the shop. "Them again," I mutter.

"What?" Zuko asks.

"Two gossipy girls I was eavesdropping on earlier," I tell him. "They're really silly." I've gotta thank the proprietor of this shop for being amazing, because I can feel all the jewelry very well, since he built the place entirely of stone.

The clerk's finally noticed there are people around, as I feel his heart set into a panicky beat. "F-fire Lord!" he gasps, and then there's bowing and stupidity, which I ignore in favor of grabbing Katara's arm and dragging her towards one case. Pointing to the middle one, I ask, "This is the best in the store. Think it'll work?"

"It's perfect," she says, "But I think we ought to let Zuko suffer formality a little before letting him know we've found the ring." The two of us laugh, and listen to him being his awkward, Zuko-y self. I can't _wait_ to hear his awkward practice for proposing to Mai, so I mention that to Katara, who bursts out laughing.

"We _have_ to get Suki and Ty Lee here for that," she giggles. "Oh spirits."

Finally, we rescue him, get the ring, and escape. The girls watch us go, gossiping excitedly. Obviously they're clueless about Water Tribe betrothals, as well as clueless about the fact that no one takes their prospective wife to see the ring (which is stupid, since she's the one who has to wear it...) but that they always take a good female friend (or two, or three, or four, or more...) to help them pick it out, since most of them lack taste.

His hammering out of a proposal, done in his macho bonding time with Snoozles and Twinkletoes, is eavesdropped on by us girls (with the exception of Mai), and is predictably awful and hilarious.

"Hi, uh, it's Zuko. I know you've been wondering when I was going to propose to you and-"

"That sounds like a breakup spiel!" Sokka calls. "Next."

"Uh... Hi, Zuko here, Fire Lord and all..."

"Now you sound egotistical."

"Hi, Zuko here, I love you-"

"Me? Oh Zuzu, I always knew it," Sokka teases.

"Sokka, shut up," Aang says.

"Did you have to adopt Azula's nickname?" Zuko complained, and was ignored.

"But he's being so awkward about it!"

"Ignore Sokka, Zuko. Just be like 'Hey, Mai, wanna be my Fire Lady?' and wink! It'll work!"

We dissolve into silent giggles. We so know what Katara's eventual proposal will be like, now.

"He needs more romance in it than that!" Sokka protests. "HEY! He should have a rose and then-"

"I am not doing whatever it is you were doing that one time," Zuko mutters.

"How about you try making it simple?" asks Mai. Who I hadn't felt enter the room. Well, she is an assassin...I'd better start paying attention to this more again.

All three boys make startled choking noises, and we lose it completely. Which makes them choke more.

Zuko manages to stop choking, and stammers out something that sounds like 'Marry me?' but I can't be sure. And then I feel the two of them kissing, and we applaud, even while we're laughing like crazy.

I kind of want to go find those girls again and let them know they're idiots. But the lure of a celebration involving cactus juice wine is stronger.

Though winding up in jail and having to be bailed out by Aang was not in my plans.

Neither was kissing Haru.

* * *

Don't ask me how or when or why Haru is in the Fire Nation. I have even less of an idea than Toph. That...just happened.


	5. Let's Rumble

Let's Rumble

You know the feeling of being hungry and wanting to throw up at the same time? And not being able to do either? Yeah. That, my friends, is what I call a hangover. Everyone else gets raging headaches, I just want to vomit and eat and vomit again and eat some more. Yes, that sounds gross, no, I won't deny it. But it'd be so satisfying to be able to do either.

Of course, when I'm in Gaoling, I'm only expected to do one, rather than the other. Well, my parents expect me to eat, I expect myself _not_ to eat because I'm so scared they'll drug it and keep me there. I don't know when I got so paranoid, but Ty Lee assures me it's entirely rational, considering all the stupid things they've done.

Like the metal cage. (I can bend metal, bitches!)

Or the wooden cage. (Forgot Snoozles' present to me...)

Or the paid bandits paid to try kidnapping me from Ba Sing Se when I was cleaning up rogue Dai Li. (Really? The Earth King had to threaten them with confiscation of their rights and properties before they'd stop sending them!)

Or the bandits paid to kidnap me from Omashu. (It's a city made entirely of stone and metal...do I really need to explain how bad an idea that was?)

Or the pirates paid to kidnap me from the North Pole. (On a metal boat swiped ages ago from the Fire Nation... I let them get me on it and destroyed the thing.)

The metal cage, with those two idiots, was the only one to happen after the first time I ran away from the parents. Everything else happened as I was running away the second time, before I managed to find my way to Kiyoshi Island, where...well, no one was dumb enough to believe my parents' bile that it'd be easy to kidnap a 'frightened little Earth Kingdom girl' (funny how they never remembered to mention that I'm the best damn Earthbender in the world, or the best friend of the Avatar, the Fire Lord, and the future leader of the Southern Water Tribe... I can't imagine that anyone would've been dumb enough to take that job on otherwise. I suspect they've made other attempts, but that the people have actually recognized me and told my parents to stick it somewhere.

There's a longer list of reasons why I hate my hometown, and not all are related to my parents. Just...most of them are. Like the fact I can't drink. (I AM SIXTEEN AND IT IS LEGAL FINALLY). And the fact that the only things I eat are things Ty Lee buys at the bars for me. And the fact that I have to listen to my parents whine and sob at me that they want me to come home and be a big sister to my new little sister, who isn't blind. (Which, by the way, is an awful reason - the girl's intelligent enough, she'll run away as soon as she can walk. Though they may not overprotect her, since she can see.) The only good thing about this is it relieves me of needing to some day act like a Bei Fong. Cuz they'll obviously make the obedient one the heir. (If only this would mean they'd can the sobbing...)

Anyhow, remember that hangover feeling? That's also the feeling I get whenever I'm in Gaoling. Even when I'm in disguise and there's no way anyone could recognize me and I haven't been drunk in weeks. Like right now! I mean, who's gonna pick a short, stooped little beggar-looking-thing for the Blind Bandit and daughter of one of the richest freakin' families in the Earth Kingdom? No one.

I wouldn't even be here - I haven't spoken to them for half a year now - if it weren't for a group of bandits that have been doing a hell of a lot of damage to the Earth Kingdom. Bumi decided to leave this for me. Such a thoughtful would-be-adoptive parent, isn't he? Aww. (Barf. But he's cool, really). But seriously, it's cool. I like difficult jobs, and tracking bandits is one of those.

At present, I'm perched, doing - what else? - some begging by croaking some tune. Most people are giving me disgusted looks, I'm sure, because I sound awful. But I can hear every word these guys are saying behind me. I've been in position to capture them for days...I just wanna see what idiotic move they're going to pull next. And they keep saying Bei Fong - me, or my family? Given that we're in Gaoling, though, I'm betting on my family.

"We'll move on it tonight," the one I've identified as their leader says. He's got a deep, thick voice. He's also an Earthbender. You can tell by whether or not a bandit is an Earthbender or not by whether they've bothered to steal shoes or not. He's the only bender in this group, which means he's the only one who'll be any real fun.

"Don't the Bei Fongs have a lot of guards, though?" asks the only one who's allowed to question the plans. He has a nasal voice that makes you want to punch him. Next to the leader, he's the only brainy one. A group of twelve, and ten of them are just brawn. Pitiful.

"Of course; they're rich. That's why we'll be meeting up with a group of Fire Nation renegades to storm their compound." I can feel him grinning, and the sick feeling intensifies.

Someone drops a carrot in my bowl - rotten, half-eaten, ewwwww. Still, I fall all over myself acting grateful and stuff.

"What's that noise out there?" demands whiny.

"Just some beggar who got food," the leader rumbles. "Idiot's kissing up to the dumbass that gave it."

The group laughs. Idiot_s_ indeed.

That night, which they've identified as their break-in night, I slip into my family's house as the servants are shutting the gates. They don't even see me. Then I wait in the front gate. And I mean _in_ as in _inside_ the gate itself. It's a trick that Twinkletoes and I came up with. A great position to spy in, not to mention to do things from. The guards don't even notice me. Yay for Earth Kingdom houses built from stone!

Hours later, I'm the only one to feel them coming. I laid my traps earlier in the day, and so the Fire Nation renegades coming up silently from the rear of the house are suddenly sunk to their necks in abruptly liquid ground, which promptly solidifies around them. As they panic, I fold out from the gate to in front of it, with the stone sealing up behind me. The bandits, who've just arrived at the front gate, jump, and one yells in alarm.

Security alerted, I think, and grin.

"It's the beggar," whiny says.

I let the hood fall, still grinning like an idiot. "Aw, let's not call names. I'm the Blind Bandit, baby," - I blame Ty Lee for any and all usage of the word 'baby', by the way, since it's become her favorite and only insult, and thus worked it's way into my insults as well - "Let's rumble." Bad puns would be all me, by the way.

They're alarmed, but apparently still determined to try taking me on, since I feel Earthbender adjust. It's so easy to stop his moves that I'm barely even trying, even as I'm taking out his buddies. Just a sinkpool here, and a sinkpool there, and then moving the sinkpools together and waiting for my little entourage that has the things to neutralize benders temporarily, while they get taken to prison.

The guards finally come out of the gates right as I finish Earthbender. Total knockout, oh yeah.

"Lady Bei Fong!" they say, alarmed. "What- To what- this-" Can't even finish their own sentences, once they spot the Fire Nation renegades being added to the pool of immobile, swearing bandits. A bunch of seemingly only heads would do that to people, I guess.

"Just handling some of the Earth Kingdom's problems," I inform them. "No need to inform my parents; I'll be gone tomorrow."

I feel their stupefied nods, and sweep off, the batch of heads being dragged after me. I suppose I'll have one of the town's benders paid to clean up the area. It feels like it won't be safe for riding on for a while.

The next morning, we're loaded up, heading to Ba Sing Se, and my parents won't ever know.

Well, unless Bumi sends them another letter detailing my life. He seems to find it hilarious to send them raving. (I refuse to describe the letter I got when they found out I'd kissed Haru... "Our baby girl cannot be destined for a common marriage such as that". I mean, really? They'd just had an actual baby, I think I'm an adult now...)

I suppose that letter's the only reason I dated him for any length of time, though.

* * *

Aand my mental version of how things progress gets weirder. Sigh. I do like the idea of Toph primarily hanging out with Bumi and Ty Lee as she gets older, though.


End file.
